Need advice on powering 12v valve with 18650 battery

Hardware
1

I bought this 12v valve actuator to turn on the drip system for my whole garden. My plan is to run this from 18650 cells with solar charging. I am doing another project with an ESP32 running soil moisture sensors and temperature probes which I am planning on powering in the same way. My original idea was to use a TP4056 for charging battery and outputting to 2 boost converters. One boosts the voltage to 5v to power the ESP, the other is a MT3608 capable of boosting to 12v to power the valve actuator. I am trying to incorporate everything to utilize the same battery pack/solar charger/housing as both projects are very close proximity.

I am not very experienced with DIY electronics so I’m not sure if this is a good idea or whether I should just do a seperate battery/solar/boost setup for each project. Also not sure if these are even the components I should be using or whether I need to add more things in like resistors or capacitors etc. I don’t know much about currents and voltages e.g how much components can handle before being burned out.

I attempted to power and operate the actuator earlier today and I put some thought to the actuator drawing a lot of current as it operates. The 12vdc wall plug it came with is 1a, and the MT3608 says it is 2a so I figured it should be ok but maybe I was way off because I’m pretty sure I fried something. I set the MT3608 to exactly 12v before connecting it and had my multimeter connected to measure the current so I could work out how much power the actuator would use each time it was operated to determine how many batteries I might need to power it. The actuator operated as I connected the power up but then nothing else happened so I started checking voltages on some pins.

The MT3608 output pins were now only around 3.2v, the battery itself 3.5v, the TP4056 output pins showed no voltage iirc and the led on the 5v boost module was not lit anymore. The TP4056 led does light up if I power via usb however so may not have fried that but weird how there is no voltage on the outputs. So I then connected the battery directly to the MT3608 which still only showed around 3.2v output but the module got very hot!

So I may need some new modules? Good thing they are cheap. Any suggestions?

2

No way to run power to the valve?

3

I advice not to start with this then. I am experienced but I have currently the 3rd iteration of sprinkler/irrigation electronics running an still have some random issues… I would never be able to solve if I were not “experienced”

4

Depending on which TP4056 module you bought it may or may not have over current protection @ 3 A. If your actuator draws 1 A @ 12 V that is 12 Watts. If the battery provides 12 Watts @ 3.7 V that is 3.2 A which might be okay. But, If your valve is tight to turn it may have drawn more amps than that. For instance if the actuator drew 1.5 A then the battery would need to provide 4.8 A.